Down We Tumble
by sdbubbles
Summary: Injury can be physical, mental and emotional. When there's only one other person who really knows what happened, who saw it happen, are they the right person to lean on?
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: This is all a bit unpleasant but oddly interesting to write. Hopefully it'll make some sense.**

**Sarah x**

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"Ugh, come _on_!" Serena shouted impatiently. Stuck behind a lorry on the dual carriageway, unable to safely overtake, was not where she needed to be this morning. Where she needed to be was in Henrik Hanssen's office for an hour and then the rest of the day on Keller attempting to pretend Edward Campbell was not working with her.

She decided to turn off and take the back road – at this rate it was going to be far quicker and the lorry in front was only getting on her nerves. Another car, probably equally impatient, turned off behind her. A car she recognised to be Henrik Hanssen's. It brought a wide smile to her face. Well, at least he was running late too; he couldn't give her any hassle when he was stuck in the same traffic. Perhaps, for once, he would believe something that came out of her mouth.

It was strange to see him driving. She didn't know why but she was never able to picture him doing normal things like sleeping, eating, drinking, driving...he was _that_ odd.

Her smile vanished when she glanced in the mirror. His car was skidding and pulling to the side, and she could see the flash of fear and confusion in Hanssen's face even from that distance. He looked so helpless.

She turned the blind corner and anxiously waited for him to follow, relieved when the Swede's car turned the bend carefully. He should have pulled over by now but there was nowhere to do so where they wouldn't be killed the second another car met them on the road. She turned the double bend and heard a deafening noise.

She slowed down and waited for him, but he never came around.

Her blood ran cold.

She hit the brakes and parked in the nearest layby, searching for her phone. "No bloody signal!" she exclaimed to herself.

She clambered out of the car and began to walk back along the roadside, trying to work out just where he had come off the road. It hadn't been far, but then she was travelling slower on foot than she had been in the car. She checked her phone again. Still no reception. She should have known that; it was a part of the road Eleanor frequently complained she couldn't even get a text message to send.

She saw the car sitting in a field, battered but the right way up, a small mercy. She scrambled down the hill and almost instantly slipped, rolling down the slope haphazardly as sticks, stones and plants ripped at her skin and clothes. She heard and felt something crack in her ankle, causing a horrible pain she willed herself to ignore until she helped Hanssen.

When she got to the car, the doors were caved in. Trying to get them open was pointless. She glanced at her phone, not really expecting to see anything but 'no service.' She looked around and picked up a large rock, proceeding to batter in the passenger side window until it shattered and she could open the door from the inside. She noticed his phone in the foot well. The remnants of his phone, shattered and dismantled.

"Mr. Hanssen," she tried to wake him. She took his pulse. It was there, at least. There was a cut on his head, and the airbag lay sprawled, stained with his blood. "Oh, God," she sighed. "Mr. Hanssen, come on!" she shouted at him, tapping his face lightly. "_Henrik_!" she yelled. "Wake up, damn it!"

He stirred, groaning deeply. He turned around and faced her. "Ms. Campbell?" he asked weakly. "What are you doing here?"

"I was in the car in front of you when you crashed," she hastily explained. She put her fingers to his neck to check his pulse again but he batted her hand away impatiently. "Don't be ridiculous," she scolded him.

"I'm fine," he retorted.

"You just crashed your car at fifty-odd miles an hour and tumbled down the hill. You're not fine, Henrik," she replied, using his first name to try and tear down his defences so she could help him. He seemed aware but she felt the need to check. "Follow my finger," she ordered him, moving it back and forth across his field of vision.

"I'm fine!" he insisted.

She rolled her eyes and asked him, "What month is it?"

"August!"

"What year?"

"2013."

"Who's the Prime Minister?" she asked.

"David Cameron," he replied.

"Which doctors are on shift on AAU today?"

"Myself, Sacha Levy, Gemma Wilde and Harry Tressler."

"Keller?"

"You, Edward Campbell and Antoine Malick."

"Darwin?"

"Elliot Hope, Jac Naylor and Mo Effanga." He gave an impatient sigh at her memory-checking, slightly paranoid by the massive cut still dripping blood down his face. "Look, Ms. Campbell, I am absolutely fine. My memory is fine!"

"Now, do you feel like you could walk to my car, because your phone's taken a hiding and mine has no reception."

He nodded, though she saw it was against his medical judgement to be moved. It didn't sit right with Serena either. However, they had little choice if they wanted to get him to the hospital. She got out and hobbled awkwardly to his side of the car. He was aware enough to realise that he needed to open the door from the inside.

"You're limping," he told her as she reached across him to undo his seatbelt.

"Don't worry about it," she shot him a reassuring smile. Her ankle was agony, but he was in a worse state than she was. Once they got to the hospital she could have someone check her over, but Hanssen was first priority.

She let him out to try and stand on his own – she knew he would never cooperate if she didn't at least let him attempt independence – but she had to watch as his right leg collapsed beneath him. He fell to the ground before she could move to catch him. He was weaker than she had first thought; something was clearly wrong with his leg. It was probably broken but she didn't tell him. He probably already knew and if he didn't, she wasn't going to unnecessarily freak him out.

"OK," she groaned, getting down to his level. "It's OK." She took his arm and slung it around her shoulders so he could use her for support. She looked around and tried to find a way out of this field and back onto the road without climbing the hill. There was no other way. The embankment bordered the whole roadside adjacent to the fields for miles.

She sighed and they started walking – hobbling – up to the bottom of the slope. "That looks like Mount Everest," she admitted. She heard him mumble something in what she assumed was Swedish and promptly decided he was insulting her without her knowledge. She rolled her eyes and started to proceed up Mount Everest, the pain almost unbearable. They had to stumble up as one. Two people with the physical ability of one injured person.

They fell together halfway up, and she sensed Hanssen losing his determination. She turned her head, her arm still around his waist. "It's only a little bit further. I promise," she said. There was something else wrong with him. He was weaker than he should have been with just a broken leg. She wiped the blood off his face with her free hand. The undiluted vulnerability in his eyes was slightly frightening.

She helped him up again and led him to the roadside. "It's not far, OK?"

"I'm fine."

"You sound like a broken record," she sighed, limping in time with him, memories of the three-legged race in primary school haunting her. She never was very good at sports.

It was exhausting, walking along that deserted winding road. She was barely able to walk herself, never mind become Hanssen's crutch. "We should never have come down here," he admitted.

"It's a blessing in disguise," Serena contradicted him breathlessly. He was surprisingly heavy for such a skinny man. "That would have been a million times worse if it had happened on the dual carriageway." He tilted his head in concurrence, obviously realising that had it happened there, it would not only have caused worse injury to him, but could have caused a pile up. In which case, she might have crashed as well. The thought sent an awful icy shudder through her.

They walked in silence, neither having the energy to talk when it was needless. If there was one thing about Henrik Hanssen she actually did like, it was the fact there was no need to talk about anything that didn't need discussed.

When they reached her car, she opened the passenger side door and he just about fell into the seat. She pulled his seatbelt across him, tapping his cheek lightly with the palm of her hand in an effort to both comfort him and wake him up a bit. She smiled at him and got in the driver's seat, dreading having to drive back to the hospital with what she was sure was a broken ankle. She did an exceptionally careful three-point turn and headed back to the dual carriageway.

"See where impatience gets you," Serena joked. Though there was no need for a conversation, she wanted to keeping him talking so he could remain aware.

"A lesson we should both take heed of," he replied. "Why did you go down there?" he asked curiously. "Why not just get to where you could call the emergency services?"

It was a question she couldn't really answer, so she just replied, "Instinct."

The pain in her ankle was unreal but she was trying to keep her mind on the road. If she let it distract her, Hanssen would survive one accident just for her to get him wrapped around one of these bloody trees. She was unnerved slightly to feel tears of physical pain trickling down her face. She looked around and found him zoning out again. Looking for a question to pull him back, she asked the most ridiculous and pointless thing, but it was something to keep his attention: "Which ward do you want me to take you to? ED, AAU or Keller?"

"Keller," he answered. Oh. She hadn't expected that answer. "It's the quietest of three, and the ED and AAU are always constantly overrun." It made sense now; it also proved that his brain was still functioning, so whatever was wrong with him, it wasn't because he'd smacked his head.

When she pulled up at the hospital, she parked in her space as it was reasonably close to the door. She dragged him out the car and they once again hobbled as one to the entrance. A nurse passed with an empty wheelchair and Serena stopped her. "Are you needing that?"

"No, I was about to put it back," the young woman replied. "Here. He's gonna peg out."

"Thanks," Serena smiled. "Sit down, Mr. Hanssen."

"I'm fine," he answered stubbornly.

"For crying out loud, Henrik!" she half-shouted at him. "Bloody well sit down!" She had attracted the attention of those around them and he obeyed reluctantly. She leaned into the chair for support and got in the lift.

When she the lift doors opened, she spotted her ex-husband and shouted, "Edward!" He turned on his heel. "Edward, come and help!" He half-ran to them, Malick behind him. Malick took Hanssen.

When the support of the chair was gone, she let out a loud gasp as the pain overwhelmed her leg again and she almost fell, held up only when Edward caught her. "OK," he said. "OK, Serena. Let's get you into bed." She glared at him. "Sorry."

He helped her onto the nearest bed and put her legs onto the bed. "Just my luck to break my ankle saving the Swedish sod's bacon," she grumbled.

"What even happened?!" Edward exclaimed, looking at her ankle with a grimace.

"Long story."

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**Hope this is OK!  
Please feel free to leave me a review and tell me what you think!  
Sarah x**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: HELLO. Just home from seeing my new boss. This should be fun. Let's not tell him he know my grandad though. I'm fairly sure Grandad would have pissed him off at some point ;) thanks to all of you who have read and reviewed this! I'm glad you enjoyed the first chapter and hope you like this one too!**

**Sarah x**

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Hanssen woke bleary eyed and slightly dizzy, Michael Spence standing over him. As far as he remembered, it was the American's day off, so something must have happened for him to be here. "What's happening?" he asked, attempting to sit up. He instantly thought better of it when he felt what he presumed were stitches pulling on his abdomen.

"Well, you're no longer in a position to call Naylor a one-kidneyed freak. Might come across as a little hypocritical," Michael joked as he skimmed through Hanssen's charts.

"You took out my _kidney_?" Hanssen demanded, not quite sure if this was one of Michael's jokes or not.

"Yeah," Michael replied, putting his chart down and sitting in the visitors' chair next to the bed. "It was killing you. Spewing out toxins into your body because it was dying. Kinda a good idea to take the poisonous organs out of your body." It made sense now that he thought about it, but Hanssen admitted to himself that he was currently quite slow on the uptake. "Oh, and you've got soft tissue damage in your right leg. How it's not broken I'll never know."

"Thank you," Hanssen said, for once sincerely grateful he had Michael's arrogant talent at his hospital. While the man was possibly one of the most irritating people ever to have walked this planet, he was undeniably a good surgeon despite his occasional naïve stupidity.

"Any time," he smiled. "You were lucky. Saw the state of your car on the news. If Serena hadn't stopped and got you out, you'd have been dead by the time she got help to you," he explained.

"Owing my life to Serena Campbell," Hanssen sighed. "Do you think she'll ever let me forget it?"

Michael grinned. "No. But she got a bit messed up herself. I'm gonna make her stay in overnight for observation and I know how _that's_ gonna go down," he sighed at the prospect of forcing Serena to stay in hospital for the night. Hanssen could see Michael's point – she looked very pale and drawn.

"Like a lead balloon?" Hanssen suggested. He glanced over at Serena in the bed next to him, reading through files like there was nothing wrong with her, earphones in, blocking the whole ward out. "She may just hit you and make a run for it."

"Not on that leg, she won't," Michael reminded him with a nod towards the brace and plaster on Serena's ankle. "She's going nowhere." Michael's eyes followed Edward Campbell as he walked across the ward. "And Satan's on a double shift. She's gonna hate me."

"Satan?" Hanssen asked, slightly confused.

"Yeah. Edward. She calls him 'Satan.' Like I said, she's gonna hate me," Michael repeated. Serena's nickname for her ex-husband, Hanssen had to confess, was amusing; it actually made him curious as to what exactly happened between those two.

"Not as much as she hates me," Hanssen pointed out fairly.

"If she hated you, she would've left you for dead."

Hanssen remained silent, not wanting to dig himself a hole in front of the American consultant. He was, of course, eternally grateful that Serena had stopped to find him when she did. Michael was right – he owed her his life. He owed her even for the fact that she had kept an eye on him when it became clear there was something wrong with his car. He had heard a knocking from the front wheel, which, in his limited knowledge of cars, generally meant the steering was shot. The steering had been off for a while and he hadn't had the time to go to a garage and he had stupidly assumed it was nothing too major. She had stayed in front of him and watched. He had not known it was her, too distracted by the car and attempting to control it.

He watched as Edward sat down next to her and attempted to check up on her. In true Serena style she completely blanked him, and Henrik just had to smile slightly at her antagonistic approach to dealing with her ex-husband.

"She's not very nice to him, is she? Annalese is actually nicer to me than Serena is to Edward," Michael admitted, and Hanssen had heard some stories of how Annalese tended to make his life miserable by taking his children from him. "Makes you wonder what he did. Now, _he_, Mr. Hanssen, is someone she hates."

"I don't think she does hate him," Hanssen contradicted him, watching her intently pretend Edward wasn't there because she didn't want to talk to him. "I think she's keeping her hands clean of him." He wasn't usually one for talking about his staff, but the whole Serena and Edward (or 'Sedward' as Sacha Levy and Mo Effanga had fondly dubbed them) situation intrigued him – Edward was still breathing, for one thing, which was nothing short of a miracle.

"Whichever it is, I don't envy him."

Hanssen nodded in agreement having heard how she had stripped Edward down on AAU and frightened most of the nurses half to death while she did it. He had been on the receiving end of that side to her himself, little did Michael know, and could safely say even he was shaken by that switch she could flip between sweetly polite and almost murderous.

Despite the annoyance in her face, she looked really quite vulnerable and sweet.

"Right," Michael said cheerily. "I'm gonna leave you to rest. If you need anything, just ask."

"My laptop," Hanssen demanded. Michael didn't even need to speak for him to know he wasn't getting to do any work. He may have allowed Serena, but Serena was in a better condition than he was and she didn't doubt that she had threatened to knock Michael's head off his shoulders if he didn't allow her to work from her bed.

As Michael walked away, Hanssen leaned back. He felt weak and odd, and was trying to get his head around the idea that Michael Spence had removed one of his organs from his body before it killed him. It was a lot for him to take in, and taking things in was not his forte. He usually just left those kinds of issues and told himself they were not an issue. He briefly wondered how long he could block all this out before it caught up with him.

He looked around and saw Edward walking away looking resigned to Serena's mood swings. As soon as her ex-husband and current source of irritation was gone, she yanked her earphones out, turned to Hanssen and said, "How are you feeling?"

Taken aback by her concern, he replied, "I'm fine."

"Broken record again!" she exclaimed, chucking her files onto the table. "What did Michael do to you?" she asked.

"He took out a kidney."

"Oh. That's not so bad," she allowed. He saw in her face that she had been expecting – perhaps dreading – much worse than a damaged kidney. And to be fair, he was well aware that it could have been much worse.

"You do realise Michael plans on keeping you in tonight?" Hanssen warned her in advance that she was about to be chained to the bed. Metaphorically speaking, of course. "And Satan is on shift tonight." She gave him a withering look. "Why is Michael insistent that you stay in?"

She sighed and answered, "When I came to get you I fell down the hill. That's how I broke my ankle. And I hit a rock or two on the way down, so he's worried about my internal organs. Oh joy," she grinned sarcastically. She glanced at Edward, who was standing at the nurses' station chatting to an animatedly happy Chantelle Lane. "If I commit murder tonight, you'll cover for me, right?"

"Why haven't you sacked him yet?" he asked her. Upon finding that he had inadvertently hired her ex-husband, towards whom she still felt some anger, he had half-expected the man to be gone by the end of the week. But she had persisted with him, as if determined to not let him win whatever kind of twisted game they spent their lives playing.

She gave a girlish laugh. "Because it would look like I sacked him out of personal grievances. Which, to be fair, would be perfectly true if I were to get rid of him. And it's good to have the upper hand for once," she admitted with a little smile.

He smirked to himself; he should have pegged Serena as the type to enjoy finally having something over the person who had hurt her. Hanssen didn't doubt that, however much he knew she would deny it, Edward had in fact hurt her. "He's not that bad, you know," he allowed, having had a couple of conversations with the man.

"Yeah. If you're not married to him."

He could not refrain from chuckling. It was unusual to hear Serena sound childish over something she was bitter about. He watched her wriggle herself under the blankets with difficulty, groaning slightly in pain. Hanssen was suddenly thankful for painkillers, knowing that both he and Serena would have been in much worse pain than they were now without them. She lay on her uninjured side so she faced him. Why was she deliberately talking to him?

"Thank you," he finally found himself saying. "For coming back for me. Michael says that if you had gone for help I wouldn't have survived until it got to me. So thank you."

"You actually think I would've just left you there?" she challenged what he had been fearing was written all over his face. He was finding control more difficult to retain under medication and physical exhaustion.

"You hate me," he replied simply with a slight shrug of his shoulders. He would have thought it was obvious, since she frequently displayed antagonistic and infuriated behaviour towards him.

Serena laughed into her pillow. "Of course I don't hate you!" she giggled. The painkillers, Hanssen decided, had gone to Serena's head. "You get on my nerves, definitely. But I don't hate you." Her eyes were sparkling – again, it was probably the drugs making her hazy – and her smile was wide.

"You know," Hanssen sighed. "If you had left me and I had died, you would have most likely got my job."

"And I would never have been able to live with myself," she confessed. "Don't dwell on it," she advised him. "You're not dead. You're alive and you're in danger of me slapping this nonsense out of you," she added.

He let out an exhausted groan. "What a day," he moaned to himself. "This is _not_ how I planned to spend today."

"Yeah, I wasn't planning on being stuck in a hospital bed either," Serena smiled, obviously trying to keep both their spirits. "It'll be OK, I guess. It's only one night. For me, anyway," she added. "Though I'm still going to make Michael feel two inches tall," she winked. "Just for the fun of it. Nothing more enjoyable than winding up the American." She paused. "Actually, there is."

"What?"

"Winding up the Swede."

Hanssen just gave a quiet laugh with her, oddly grateful he had her to speak to. Otherwise he thought being confined to Keller would have driven him slightly mad. He was not her favourite person, and she was not his, but she was someone to speak to; she seemed to have put the hostility aside just for the moment, so they could keep each other company.

She reached up to the bedside table and took down a chocolate bar, snapping some off. She carefully threw it to him. "Why are you being..." Hanssen struggled for the right word.

"Nice?" she supplied for him. He nodded. "Because you look like hell. Even _I_ can't be mean to a man who looks like that."

"Charming," he commented. She laughed sweetly again and fumbled on the bedside table until she found her phone and started tapping away at it. She was a strange woman.

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**Hope this is OK!  
Please feel free to leave me a review and tell me your thoughts!  
Sarah x**


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: 1am. Again. Oh well :) again, I find this chapter kinda odd but then I'm quite tired so just ignore me! Thanks again to everyone who has read and reviewed - always much appreciated :D**

**Sarah x**

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Serena sat up at the sound of footsteps at her bedside; Michael was sitting down next to her. "I wanna keep you in overnight," he told her gently.

She buried her face in her pillow. She could decide if she wanted to stay or not. Eleanor needed her at home, but she knew the risks of not staying. "I'm fine," Serena grouched into the linen of the pillowcase. "I need to go home."

"No good at home if you drop down dead, Serena," Michael pointed out. It wasn't likely to happen, and it was a major exaggeration on his part, but he was right. She had battered her body saving Hanssen, and if something were to happen at home it would most likely escalate. Here, at least, she was surrounded by qualified nurses and doctors rather than one teenage girl with a tendency to panic when things turned nasty.

"If you admit me, Michael, I will hang you from the sixth floor window and allow Jac Naylor to castrate you. Do I make myself clear?" she demanded. He looked a little taken aback by her aggressive reaction.

"Be a good girl now. Hanssen's staying."  
"Hanssen's only got one kidney," she snorted. "He's not going anywhere very fast."

"Neither are you," he reminded her with a nod down to her foot. "Come on. One night. Just for me?" he asked, putting on the mock puppy dog face of his.

"One condition," she sighed. "You keep a leash on Satan. If he winds me up I will _not_ be responsible for my actions," she warned solemnly. In truth she was not on such bad terms with Edward, but he knew her too well. He knew her well enough to know how much Hanssen's crash – the fallout of it – affected her. She didn't want to answer to him.

"He's only making sure you're OK," reasoned Michael. "He cares about you. You know that, don't you? He's trying to be your friend."

She didn't want Edward as a friend. It was either mortal enemies or doing something she would later regret. And right now, 'mortal enemies' sounded like the better of the two options. "I know that. It's complicated, Michael."

Michael snorted. "Serena, 'complicated' is just a word people use to say, 'If I tell you, you won't approve so I'll say it's complicated and hope you leave me alone.'"

"Yeah, that's pretty much it," Serena smiled at him. "Anyway, he's on shift so he'll have plenty to do." She knew that wasn't entirely true. Edward had to be here as he was the on-call anaesthetist but, really, it was a night-shift and there wasn't going to be much to do between surgeries, which tended to happen only when urgent. In essence, the man was free to come and annoy her, probably with the best of intentions, if he wanted. "Just let him do what he wants," she concluded with an inward sigh. "He always does anyway."

"So you're letting me admit you for the night, then?" he checked.

"Feel free to imprison me in your hell hole," she grinned, trying to make light of the situation. She glanced over at a sleeping Hanssen. "He's gone all morbid," she confided in Michael. "All that 'what if' nonsense."

"What did you say to him?"

"That I was going to slap it out of him."

Michael laughed. "He'll come out of it," he said confidently. "I guess he's just shocked. He _did_ nearly die. Bound to shake him."

"I don't know," she sighed. "I just don't like it when he talks like that. He's Hanssen. He's not _meant_ to say those things." The truth was that she had never seen him, until now, as breakable. He had always been the robot-like being in her eyes, either unable or unwilling to show any vulnerability, humanity or humility. But now she wasn't so sure how she saw him. "Just ignore me," she smiled. "The drugs are going to my head."

"OK," he replied. "Go back to sleep and I'll go fill out all the bureaucratic crap." She gave a quiet laugh and flopped her head back onto her pillow; she was utterly exhausted. It had been a long day. She laughed Hanssen's worries and thoughts away but in truth she was thinking similar things – what if she hadn't got to him in time? What if, God forbid, she hadn't even stopped? What then?

She didn't tell Michael for fear he would send her up to Psych, but every time she attempted to sleep, she saw it all over again. Or more specifically, she saw what could have happened. What she had seen the first time around and what she hadn't. Her mind kept trying to fill the gap between the car disappearing and her seeing it lying in the field, and every time the car fell down the hill a different way.

She watched as the car skidded and Hanssen tried to brake it steady, but it did no good. Suddenly it lost its traction and fell backwards out of sight.

She was scrambling down the hill, falling over herself, slamming into anything and everything in her path, breaking her ankle...and then she was trying to wake Hanssen. And he wasn't responding. He should have responded by now. She felt dread wash over her as she cautiously put her fingers to his neck. Nothing.

She started to shake in the knowledge he was dead and her mind went blank as to how to help him. "Come on, Serena," she berated herself quietly, but it didn't make anything easier. It didn't make an answer magically appear in front of her. It didn't make Henrik Hanssen come back to life in front of her. He remained cold and pale, unmoving and departed.

She was in the placid surroundings of a dimly lit Keller ward; she felt hot water on her cheeks and wiped it away hastily. She looked up and sighed. Edward was sitting next to her. "I was going to wake you up," he explained his presence. "Nightmare?"

Reluctantly she nodded, not wanting to admit she was shaken by all this. "I'm fine," she whispered.

"You sound like Hanssen now," Edward pointed out with a smile. "It's alright to be upset, you know. He's not the only one who went through a trauma." She squirmed uncomfortably, not liking how Edward had always been able to see through her. He brushed her hair out of her eyes and it was only because she was too exhausted that she allowed it. "What you did was a very brave thing."

"No, it was human," she argued quickly. "It was either that or drive five or six miles to get help and then find him dead when I got back," she reasoned.

"If you say so," he smiled. He reached out and took her hand; she looked down at their joined hands. For once she didn't doubt that he was actually trying to comfort her with no strings attached. Why she was trusting him, she wasn't quite sure, but she needed to trust someone, and he knew her. She wasn't quite sure if that was a blessing or a curse; it meant she couldn't tell him she was fine because he knew she wasn't.

"What would you have done?"

"The same as you, probably," he admitted. "Do you regret it?"

"Of course not!" she retorted quickly. "I just...I don't know," she sighed. She couldn't explain what it was she was feeling. The way she kept looking over at Hanssen, listening to hear he was still breathing...what had she turned into if she was actually worrying about Henrik Hanssen, a man she spent half her time trying to work around? "I told him not to dwell on it all, but I'm doing the exact same thing, aren't I?"

"It's only natural, Serena," he reminded her. "A car crash is a big thing. Especially one like that. Saw the car on the news. How did he even survive that?"

"I have _no_ idea," she answered honestly. "It's Hanssen. When does anyone know how or even why he does things?" Edward laughed. "He'll be OK," she sighed doubtfully. "He always is."

"Unless this is the one time he's not," Edward said.

"Oh, thanks for that, my little ray of sunshine!" she sleepily snapped at him. "Nothing like putting my mind at ease. Morbid old git," she accused. He just squeezed her hand, no longer making light of anything. "Is Eleanor OK?"

"Yeah, she's staying over with Gabby," he replied. What was she doing? Going soft? Or was it that she was just too exhausted to care? "Worried about you, wanting updates every half hour. I told her not to come in. I know you don't want her to see you in a hospital bed."

She smiled sadly to herself. "Thanks," she whispered. She suddenly felt tired and wounded, unable to sleep without a hundred visions of unfulfilled possibilities making it impossible to get any peace. It spilled out in the form of tears, something that was very rarely induced emotionally in her.

"Hey, hey, don't cry!" he exclaimed quietly. She wiped the water away with her free hand but it didn't stop. "It's OK," he tried to reassure her. He looked slightly frightened and she knew why – she rarely ever really cried, and when she did she made damn sure nobody got to see it. She glared at him to try and deflect from the weakness she felt spreading inside her. She glanced around Edward to see if Hanssen was still sleeping. The man was so still he looked dead, which wasn't helping matters in Serena's mind.

"Sorry," she half-laughed at her own vulnerabilities. "Bloody pathetic."

"No, it's not pathetic," he contradicted her instantly. "You've watched a colleague crash his car, had to go and get said colleague out of the car and practically carried him up a hill to your car so you could get him to a hospital before he died! You've had the day from hell, Serena."

"Well, when you put it like that..."

"You know I'm right," he smiled at her.

"Don't push it, Edward," she warned him, keeping her voice deadpan so she would be taken seriously. "Why are you being nice?" she asked suspiciously; it was the same question Hanssen had asked her earlier and now she understood why he had asked it. It was unnerving when someone she were on far from good terms with was so kind to her. She imagined this was how Hanssen had felt when she had started talking more civilly than usual with him.

"Arguing wouldn't be good for you," he pointed out reasonably. "Just goes to show, we don't have to be bickering all the time. We are actually capable of a civilised conversation."

"Funny," she sneered at him, but she ended up smiling anyway. She was a bit shaken to find there were still silent tears, probably induced by stress, exhaustion and confusion, still pouring down her cheeks.

He gave a relaxed laugh. "Hey, I'd better get back to work. AAU theatre in ten minutes. Try and get some sleep, OK?" She nodded and he ruffled her hair lightheartedly, just as he used to do when they were younger, before making his way to the lifts.

She soon found herself staring at a sleeping Hanssen, wondering – or perhaps hoping – that he was dealing with this better than she was. He looked placid enough but she had come to understand that the water beneath the smooth surface was more murky and turbulent than it first appeared. She had only caught a glimpse or two of his quietly troubled nature, for instance, in the boardroom when Oliver Valentine had finally drowned in his own pool of mistakes, but she knew he was not as together as he appeared when shocks like this came around.

He was still quite pale and was so still it was difficult to see if he was actually breathing, and again her mind briefly compared him to the dead.

* * *

**Hope this is alright!**  
**Please feel free to review and tell me what you think!  
****Sarah x**


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: So I've written Jac, Edward and Michael into this and I have no idea why :P Ah, well. I hope it makes sense. Thanks, as always, to everyone who has read and reviewed :)**

**Sarah x**

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Hanssen looked at the clock and decided just before seven in the morning was a reasonable time to be awake. He looked around at Serena; she was sleeping but it was obviously not peaceful. He had been checking constantly through the night, whenever he could without getting caught awake by those working on the night shift. He didn't particularly want put into a drug-induced sleep.

Watching Serena sleep – he used the term loosely, because she was restless in the extreme – he wondered if he ought to say to Michael she had spent more time awake and half-conscious than she had spent sleeping. She would most likely rip his head off if she found out. But then there was every chance he wouldn't need to. He would not have put it past Edward to let Michael know at changeover time that she had suffered a broken and unpleasant sleep.

He watched quietly as she woke with a startle she fought to conceal, but it was definitely there. He had heard her talking to Edward during the night; he had not realised how much it had affected her. She had never been one for letting on about her feelings – unless they were of anger, annoyance or frustration – but he had always believed he was able to read her on some level. Obviously he wasn't as good at it as he once thought himself to be.

Her hair was messy and her face drained white as she silently met his gaze. He may not have slept, but Serena had clearly suffered for the luxury.

She looked at the clock and let her head fall back onto her pillow with a hopeless moan. "So much for my first ever lie-in," she grumbled, pulling the covers up to her chin. Hanssen was fascinated. The woman who made serial killers look tame actually looked like a frightened, vulnerable child as she seemed to hide behind the blankets. He wondered how deep she had buried these instincts, and for how long.

He didn't know what to say, or even if he should speak at all, but he settled for, "You've _never_ slept in?" She shook her head. "Even I have the occasional lie in." It made her smile, and he was fairly sure he knew why; he knew he didn't come across as relaxed enough to break a routine by sleeping in.

A nurse came over to check on him and as she rambled on, Hanssen rolled his eyes at Serena, who was silently mimicking the woman, though he did find it amusing. He watched, fighting back a tired smile, as the same nurse moved on to Serena, who clearly did not have the patience to open her mouth without offending anyone.

Hanssen sighed, feeling exhausted again, his mind clouded only slightly by the pain medication. Truthfully, he was a little bit too scared to go to sleep. He didn't trust his mind not to torment him like Serena's had obviously done to her. He was running solely on the energy Michael's sedation and the resulting slumber had provided him with, and it was rapidly waning.

"How bad was it?" he asked her. She looked confused so he elaborated, "Your nightmares. How bad were they?"

She sighed, looking at him reluctantly. "You died," she admitted grudgingly. "You were dead."

"Oh," he said, slightly surprised at her answer. "I would have thought that would be quite satisfying for you," he teased her. She made a face at him, only making herself look even more immature.

"No, it's quite harrowing, actually," she confessed sadly. "Edward had to wake me up while you were sleeping." He must have had her convinced he was sleeping, then, which meant the other staff, most of whom were not half as observant as Serena, would not have caught him awake.

Hanssen suddenly felt an inexpressible guilt that he was the one who had deprived Serena of peace. He had been the one whose car had crashed with her watching. He had been the one she had rescued from the wreckage. He had been the one she had saved. He was the reason she couldn't sleep for longer than a couple of hours.

She smiled reassuringly at him, her pale and exhausted face somehow still ghostly radiant and beautiful. He hadn't noticed just how pretty she was until now; it was a soft beauty that completely contradicted the sharp edges of her personality.

They talked for over an hour, mostly about her daughter Eleanor and her mounting paperwork and theatre list, until Serena admitted defeat and went to sleeping vowing that she was going to bully Michael into the seventh circle of hell if she wasn't discharged by midday.

He heard the clacking of heels approaching and turned to find Jac Naylor striding up to him. "I come bearing gifts," she announced boldly.

"Good morning, Miss Naylor," he raised his eyebrow at her.

She grinned and handed him an iPad – probably his own work one from his office – and explained, "Jonny took the work apps off it and put some Fruit Ninja thing on it. Don't worry, though. He saved your work to something or other before he did it. I think," she shrugged, nearly panicking Hanssen before he realised she was joking.

"How did you know the passcode?" he demanded.

"The numbers were how you'd spell 'Maja' on a phone," she winked. He hadn't realised that rumours of Maja Johansson had spread as far as Darwin Ward. And, of course, there was a small chance Jac would have stumbled across the information when sent to Sweden by Serena. He felt a little uncomfortable in that knowledge.

She pulled a book out her bag, and a large bar of high quality chocolate. "I thought it was customary to take fruit into patients," he remarked.

"Chocolate tastes better." Oh, how pregnancy had warped the mind of the woman. She now constantly snacked on the unhealthiest of foods while previously she had been insistent that sugar, fat and carbohydrates had no place in her diet. Now it seemed to be all her diet consisted of. To watch her change was an endearing reminder that even Jac was human.

"Thank you," he said gently, touched that Jac had thought of him when she had her own matters to deal with.

"Oh, and there's this," she added, pulling an envelope out of her bag and handing it to him. "I was going to get a balloon but that's a bit cliché," she smiled. He opened the envelope and found a brightly coloured card, signed by everyone who knew him. Everyone he worked in close contact with. The Darwin staff – Jonny, Jac, Mo, Elliot, a few of the nurses. The Keller staff – Malick, Digby, Edward, Chantelle, Michael. AAU – Sacha, Ric, Chrissie, Harry, Mary-Claire, Gemma...it felt odd to know all these people had thought of him. The only signature missing was Serena's, though only because she was a patient herself.

"Thanks," he whispered, reaching around with a slight groan to put it on the bedside cabinet.

"No problem," she replied. "You look awful. Did you even sleep last night?" He shook his head silently, not wanting to admit it was through a combination of fear and a need to watch Serena that he had remained awake most of the night. "Don't worry. I won't tell Michael," she promised him kindly. "We should start a club, you know. 'The One Kidney Club.' It would be very exclusive."

Hanssen allowed her a smile as she tried to make some light of his situation. He had almost forgotten he had lost a kidney. But he was wise enough to know people lived normal lives with one kidney, Jac being the case in point. Well, if Jac could be considered even remotely normal, but it would be hypocritical of him to comment.

"So. How's Keller treating you?" she asked as she leaned forward. "Any nurses I need make cry? Do I need to go and shoot Digby for you?" He gave her a glower, but appreciated the sentiment nonetheless. "I hope Michael's not enjoying bossing you around too much."

Hanssen replied, "It's not me he has to worry about. If Michael doesn't discharge her, there will be hell to pay."

Jac looked over at a sleeping Serena. "She doesn't look much better than you," Jac said honestly. "Is she OK?"

"I don't know," he admitted. "She's not saying very much." He followed Jac's gaze and watched Serena for a moment; she was sleeping but she was restless, making small movements that made it clear to those paying attention to her that it was not a peaceful slumber. "Physically, all that's wrong with her is a broken ankle and a few bruises."

"And mentally? Emotionally?"

"I'm not sure," he uncertainly answered her. "She's having nightmares. I know that much."

"She's not OK, is she?" Jac sighed. "Do you want me to talk to her?" Hanssen shook his head. He knew Jac meant well but she didn't need the added stress of Serena's issues to handle. If he wasn't confined to a bed, doomed to being useless until Michael saw fit to discharge him, he would have gone over there and shook some sense into her himself. "Are _you_ OK?" she asked.

"I think so," he replied. "I hate to admit it, but Michael seems to have done a good job." Jac laughed, just as Michael was strutting arrogantly onto the ward; Hanssen was learning quickly that Michael Spence's talent and compassion was well worth putting up with the arrogance.

"What about your head? Is it screwed on right?" she said, sounding and looking genuinely concerned. He didn't speak. He didn't want to lie to Jac – especially as she was so truly worried about both him and Serena – but he didn't want to share his own feelings and fears with her. For one thing, she was pregnant, so the stresses of other people were something she would have been wise to avoid. Also, he didn't want to appear or feel weak, or admit that he was actually scared of going to sleep in case he suffered anything similar to Serena. "Why haven't you slept? Are you too sore to sleep?"

"You'll just laugh at me," he accused before he even gave her a chance.

"I won't," she promised. She stared at him intently, her clear blue eyes penetrating his until he felt compelled to speak the truth to her.

He sighed. "I saw Serena having nightmares and now I'm worried I'll have them too."

"You don't know until you try," Jac reminded him gently. "And besides, a nightmare can't really hurt you. Only the real world can hurt you," she reasoned. "If you do have a nasty dream, you'll wake up and you'll still be on Keller. You'll still be safe."

She was right, of course, but when fear took over Hanssen, it almost paralysed him. For him, taking steps was easy. Standing still was hard. And right now he was standing still. He was left stranded and broken in a hospital, under the care of those who worked under him. He was standing still, and he hated doing it.

He watched with amused enthralment as she pulled out a packet of chocolate biscuits and started eating happily. She was a strange woman, made even stranger by hormones and the prospect of motherhood. She offered him the packet and he politely refused. For a while he deliberately diverted the conversation from the crash and towards more trivial matters, until Michael began to gently wake Serena with a look of concerned dread on his face.

"Oh, no," Jac groaned. "He's not discharging her. I can see it in his face."

"I know."

"She's going to kill him dead."

"I know."

"But if there's nothing physically wrong with her..." Jac trailed off, cottoning on as to why Michael was going to keep her in.

"Edward must have told Michael she's not properly slept yet..."

"And Michael won't discharge her until he knows she's had a full night's sleep," Jac supplied.

"Cover your ears."

"Hide under your blankets," Jac added with a cynical smirk.

"Michael's a dead man walking."

"So is Edward."

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**Hope this is OK!  
Please feel free to leave me a review and tell me your thoughts!  
Sarah x**


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: HELLO. I'm exhausted - Monday, I fixed a Mercedes van with a diesel leak in the return pipe, which necessitated in taking half the engine out; yesterday I replaced a gearbox in a car that had it in the stupidest bloody place EVER, and today there was a Discovery that came in for brake pads and then I spent three hours trying to get to the bottom of where the suspension failure was coming from. UGH. So annoying! And the gearbox saga tore up my right hand. Anyway. I'm rambling. Thanks, as usual, to everyone who reads and reviews!**

**Sarah x**

* * *

"_What_?!" Serena growled at Michael, who instantly retreated a few inches. "What are you saying? That I can't look after myself?!" Blinded by fury and a wish to murder the American for trying to keep her in hospital another night, she tried to get out of bed but her foot collapsed underneath her and she fell into Michael's arms. Well, that didn't do her argument much good.

She pushed him off her and sat back on the bed. Pinching the bridge of her nose, knowing who was behind this, she had to resist the urge to throttle Hanssen for interfering. If Jac and Michael weren't there, she would have ripped him apart.

"Which one of my characteristics would even remotely suggest I'm incapable of looking after myself?!" she demanded.

"The fact you're barely sleeping!" Michael argued. Serena glared at Hanssen, who held his hands up as he tried to plead innocence. Typical bloody Hanssen.

"Of course I've fucking slept!" she shouted, even though it was essentially a lie in Michael's eyes, because she knew that she hadn't slept like she normally did. But it wasn't affecting her. Not in any way Michael could possibly have seen.

"Hey, language!" shouted Michael, squaring up to her assertively.

"Oh, get off that bloody high horse you're sat on," she snapped. "And get me a self-discharge form while you're at it." She turned around and started throwing her phone and possessions ill-temperedly into her handbag.

"No."

That single word was more than enough to make her haphazardly turn to face him. "_Excuse me_?" she snarled at him, feeling very much at the end of her tether. She was not going to be humiliated by Michael, and definitely not by Hanssen. Even from a hospital bed he was making her life difficult.

"I'm not gonna give you a discharge form," he elaborated. Hobbling, she advanced on him, expecting him to give it up in fear of her, but he stood tall. Great. The wimpy American chose this moment to grow a backbone.

"You can't refuse me self-discharge!" she reminded him. "If I leave AMA, it's my decision."

"Don't test me, Serena," he warned, and it was easy to see that he wasn't kidding around. She glared at him but it didn't work. It wasn't fair. The one time she needed him to wimp out and he suddenly has a spine and is willing to use it. "I'm keeping you in on the grounds that you haven't slept properly, are showing signs of physical and emotional trauma and have nobody to look after you."

"I don't _need_ looking after!"

"Yeah, actually, you do!" Michael said, his voice rising as she tested his temper. "And if you wanna complain, there's your guy right there," he added, pointing to Hanssen.

"Oh, piss off, the pair of you!" she yelled, her temper finally winning out over rationality. "I'm a grown woman, not a fucking toddler!"

"_Language_!" a collective of three exclaimed – Michael, Jac and Hanssen, all together. She looked around to find Hanssen staring at her, quite shocked by her outburst, and Jac, less surprised than Hanssen and munching her way through a packet of chocolate digestives.

"Yeah? What are _you_ going to do about it?" she challenged them. "Now. I am getting dressed and I am walking out of here. Understood?"

Jac stood up and walked around to back Michael up. "First, you're not walking anywhere. You're hobbling at best," Jac pointed out, gesturing with her packet of biscuits to Serena's leg.

"Second, you have one teenage daughter who reportedly doesn't handle crises with much grace," Hanssen added, and Serena made a mental note to find out how Hanssen knew about Eleanor. "Not exactly the ideal carer."

"And thirdly," Michael added, taking a step towards her. "We know you, Serena, and we see something ain't right." Feeling ganged up on, she tried not to take it personally, but tiredness and internal turmoil made her think they were trying to upset her.

"So just sit down, shut up and accept you need another night in here," Jac advised boldly. For just a moment, Serena looked at Jac and saw a younger version of herself: tough, pained and trying to be the best doctor and woman she could.

Jac and Hanssen looked at each other, and the look of concern Hanssen wore riled her. "I don't know what you're so bothered about!" she said to him. "It's your fault I'm in this mess! Telling Michael I had nightmares and a bad night's sleep?! Are you trying to make my life miserable or are you just bloody thick?" she demanded, tapping her head with her finger to emphasise the point she was making.

"_Please_, Serena." To hear Jac say 'please' was a bit of a shock, and it stunned Serena momentarily. Michael seemed to sense her defeat and put his arm around her shoulders and guided her to the bed.

She looked around and was suddenly painfully aware that she had just kicked off in the middle of the ward, swearing and shouting with no consideration for her own image or any of the other patients surrounding her. She was an idiot.

She put her head in her hands, her mind swimming in anger, confusion and frustration. Why was this making her flip like that? She was known for having her moments, but she had never sworn in public before – at least not while sober. She had never acted threateningly to that degree. She had never shouted at Michael like that before. She had never shouted at anyone like that before. Not even Hanssen. Not even Edward. Not with so much desperation and anxiety.

Hanssen was watching her intently but, not in the mood for talking to him when it was his big mouth that had landed her here, she blanked him and shuffled under the blankets. Jac was watching her too, and was making to secret of it as Michael sat next to Serena and the ward returned to normal. She felt a hand rubbing up and down her back and realised that Michael was attempting to calm her. "Wanna talk about it?" he asked quietly.

She shook her head and refused to look at him, Hanssen or Jac again. "Just get today over with and then tomorrow I _am_ going home." It left no room for argument, and she knew he was aware that he was pushing his luck already. He patted her back lightly and left her with her thoughts and Jac, whose presence was easily felt by Serena. She sneaked a glance up at the formidable redhead and decided it was safe to look around when Jac was smiling slightly. Everyone seemed to have gone back to their business, albeit with a strangely reserved atmosphere.

"It's OK," Jac reassured her, which took Serena slightly by surprise. "We were expecting that. I'd have been more worried if you'd kept quiet."

Serena laughed bitterly. "Testament to what a lovely person I am?" she asked sarcastically.

Jac sat in the chair next to her. "Testament to how infallible you think you are," corrected Jac. "You're not infallible, Serena."

"Want a bet?" she retorted, acutely aware of how much of a threat that actually sounded. It wasn't meant to be – it was supposed to be sarcasm – but she was starting to realise that, sometimes, she was unknowingly and unintentionally threatening towards people. Especially those who showed any degree of real care for her.

She lay back a little.

What a mess.

"Not particularly, no," Jac smiled. She leaned forward to speak to her gently. "Look, why don't you phone Edward and ask him to bring your pyjamas and some clothes in? Make yourself comfortable?"

Serena's head snapped around. "Edward? Why Edward?"

Jac shrugged. "He was married to you. He knows you better than any of us do. It makes sense." Serena accepted that Jac had meant nothing by it, but when it came to Edward, she was constantly on edge. Constantly reminding the world they were no longer married for a reason; she often had to remind herself of that too.

"He's not going anywhere near my house."

"He's going to have to. Eleanor is his daughter too. He'll want to make sure she's OK for another night."

"Stop being reasonable!" Serena snapped. She put her hands over her face in frustration. She had been expecting Hanssen to be the one dealing with hospitalisation badly, but his patience, for now, seemed infinite compared to hers. She was the one driving herself up the wall.

She leaned over with a groan and got her phone from her handbag; she scrolled through the contacts until she found Edward's rarely used mobile number. Her thumb hovered over the call button, reluctant to ask a favour of him. Sighing, she deciding it was a necessary evil. If she was going to be kept here, she at least wanted to be comfortable. "Remind me to put Michael back on AAU," she remarked as Edward's phone started ringing – he was probably asleep.

She heard Jac laugh as Edward answered, sounding half-asleep. "Serena. What's up? You OK?"

"Fine," she snapped. "I need a favour."

"Yeah, anything," he instantly replied, and she could tell from his voice that he was starting to wake up properly now. "Come on. Spit it out," he added when she didn't speak.

"Um, yeah," she said, pulling herself back to her home planet, wherever that was. "Could you maybe go and get me some pyjamas and a fresh set of clothes?"

She heard Edward getting out of bed and walking down the stairs and, if she knew him at all, it was to make a _very_ strong coffee. "Why? I thought you were getting out today," he answered her tiredly.

"Hanssen's grassed me up for not sleeping and now Michael's refusing to discharge me," she explained, throwing a bitter glare at the Swede; he looked genuinely confused. It didn't sit right with her.

And she soon found out why.

"Yeah, Serena, it wasn't Hanssen. It was me," he confessed. She could just picture him cringing as he waited for her reaction.

"_What_?!" she shouted down the phone at him. "What the bloody hell did you do that for?! You _idiot_!" She threw her head back. She had known Edward was stupid. She just hadn't thought he was _that_ stupid.

He was quick to defend himself. "I told Michael for your sake. I know what you're like when you don't sleep, and I know how much it takes to give you nightmares. I know you better than you like to admit, Serena," he asserted. Oh, great – another man growing a spine at the most inconvenient of times! "I'm sorry," he immediately added, but after a pause he changed his mine. "Actually, no, I'm not sorry. I did what was best for you and I'm not going to regret it, no matter how you punish me."

"And now I remember why I divorced you," she snarled at him. "You never do the right thing, do you?!"

"I did the right thing," he insisted. "Look, I'm not going to argue about this. Where's your spare key?" he sighed.

Serena's mouth fell open slightly; she realised that, after what he had just been on the receiving end of, he was under no obligation to do as she asked. "Under the mat," she told him.

"OK. I'll be there in an hour or so."

"Thanks," she said, still quite shocked as she hung up the phone. She looked around at Hanssen. "It seems I owe you an apology. You didn't grass me up. My moronic ex-husband did."

He nodded slightly and replied, "Forget about it." Why was everyone being nice to her? She had expected a lecture about assumptions and manners from Hanssen, but he was telling her it was alright. Were they winding her up? Was this their idea of a funny joke, to let her shoot her mouth off and then have fun confusing her by reacting against normal human instinct? Were they ganging up on her for their own entertainment?

Was this really them laughing at her or was it her own paranoia setting in? She couldn't tell, and that was what frightened her the most.

* * *

**Hope this is OK!  
Please feel free to review and tell me your thoughts!  
Sarah x**


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: This is an odd chapter. It needed a lot of effort to finished because I tore my thumb open and it keeps bleeding on my laptop, haha. Thanks again to everyone who has read and reviewed!**

**Sarah x**

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Hanssen watched Serena become increasingly agitated after Jac left. While he did not like it, he accepted that to remain safe and get better, he had to stay here. But Serena wasn't accepting that. She was struggling with the confinement of the ward and probably of her own mentality.

He sighed and reached around for his iPad, wondering what kind of idiocy Jonny Maconie had installed on it. He unlocked it and looked through the home screen, finding all his work apps gone – just as Jac had said – and replaced by things like 'Angry Birds,' 'Fruit Ninja' and 'Burn the Rope.' And he didn't have a clue what any of it actually was.

Serena, however, had a teenage daughter and was bound to know how to use these apps. "Serena," he said, using her first name; calling her 'Ms. Campbell' in this situation didn't feel right, even to him. "Do you know what 'Angry Birds' is?" he asked her when she looked around. She smirked to herself. "What?!"

"How can you not know what Angry Birds is?" she grouched at him. He almost regretted asking. Almost. "You catapult the birds and try to kill the pigs."

"Come again?" he asked her, bewildered slightly by her answer.

"Never mind," she groaned. Hanssen suppressed a smile at her impatience. His smile faded when Chantelle started to approach him; as much as he liked the young woman, her optimism and brightness could be almost draining if he was not in the right mindset for it to lighten his day.

"How are you feeling, Mr. Hanssen?" Chantelle asked happily as she pressed her thumb to his wrist to take his pulse.

"Bored," he admitted.

She laughed. "Can I get you anything?"

"Clothes?" he suggested.

"Um, I could get you some pyjamas on my lunch break," she negotiated. "Oh!" she added cheerfully, half-running to the nurses' station and returning with a clear plastic bag. "The police dropped this off to Dr. Campbell last night," she explained. "He was there so he signed for it. It's the stuff you left in your car."

"Thank you," he replied, taking it from her. As she checked his meds and wrote in his chart, he dug through the bag for his wallet and handed her some money with the distinct impression she was dreading having to shop for him. However, he preferred the idea of Chantelle running this errand as opposed to the likes of Mary-Claire Carter, who was liable to buy something ridiculous for the fun of it.

He watched the young blonde saunter away happily, shaking his head to himself at her unwavering enthusiasm.

"She's like a bloody tornado," Serena commented quietly, just loud enough for him to hear her. "Minus the destruction, of course." She got out of bed and picked up her crutches; she hobbled over to his bed and sat in the chair. He looked at her in a silent demand for an explanation. She raised a dark eyebrow at him. "I thought you wanted to know how to play Angry Birds?"

He handed her the iPad and she showed him how to use the catapult, what to aim at and how to clear the levels. He followed her perfectly manicured finger with interest. It was definitely a silly game, but the concept was not. He looked down to see a soft smile on her face; this side to her was one he liked. Her guard had fallen far enough for him to see the tender, kind woman that lay beneath.

He followed her instructions and cleared the level easily. The next was more difficult, as were the ones that followed that. He had almost forgotten she was there until her hand fell onto his wrist, pausing him. He looked around. "You look awful," she said to him very gently.

Henrik stared at her for a moment. "Do the words 'pot,' 'kettle' and 'black' mean anything to you?" She laughed slightly, seemingly allowing that jibe only because it was perfectly true. "Are you alright?" he asked her.

"I've got a broken ankle," she shrugged.

"It's not your body I'm worried about," he admitted reluctantly.

She groaned. "You know it's bad when Henrik Hanssen says he's worried about you." Her cynicism was amusing though worrying. "I'm OK until I try to sleep," she confessed. "I don't know what it is. Every time I close my eyes, it all happens again. And then it all goes off track and either I'm somehow trapped in the car with you or I've crashed my own car or you've gone and died on me..." she rambled away. She looked up and he felt her search his face, so he remained placid. "Doesn't it bother you that you nearly died, Henrik?"

"I'm trying to avoid thinking about that," he sighed.

"Can't avoid it forever."

"I can try," he pointed out.

"You can dance around something all you like," Serena advised him solemnly. "But it will catch you and it might destroy you."

"Well," Henrik retorted. "Thank you, Little Miss Sunshine." He saw her glaring at him and couldn't force back the smile breaking across his face. The twisted irony was that he knew she was doing the same things as him, and she had just warned him against doing it himself.

"Just saying it like it is."

"Don't you always?" he replied. He saw the look on her face and retreated from the subject of what Serena said and what she kept to herself; she could be extremely vocal when she wanted, but sometimes her silence screamed at him. Sometimes the fact she didn't speak when everyone – himself included – expected her to made him wonder what really went on in her mind.

She silently took the iPad from him and flicked through the apps. She was freezing him out.

Hanssen looked up to find Edward Campbell wandering across the ward carrying a rucksack on one shoulder. "Here," he grumped at Serena.

"You went?" she asked, sounding a little bit shocked.

"Of course I did," he retorted, pushing the backpack into her arms. Edward winked at Hanssen, though he had no idea why. He had a feeling that Edward had done _something_ he knew would get Serena going; he could that while he was trying to distract Serena, Edward was attempting the very same in a completely different way.

"Another reason I divorced you," she sighed. "What the bloody hell do you call this?!" she demanded.

"Your pyjamas," Edward smirked.

"I hate you," she growled, not taking her gaze from the offending item of clothing.

"I know," he grinned. Serena held in her hands a pair of fleece pyjama bottoms with what Hanssen recognised to be the head of Bambi repeatedly patterned all over them. "They looked the comfiest!" he quickly defended himself. Practicality, it seemed, was not Serena's main priority.

Hanssen tried his utmost not to smile as she looked up at Edward. "Be thankful I've not got the energy to make you swallow your teeth."

"How many times in the past twenty years have you threatened to knock my teeth down my throat?" Edward asked. Hanssen found them intriguing to watch; they relied on the animosity as a shield but it was so obvious that they still cared about each other. How deep that care ran was another matter but Edward _had_ gone to Michael about Serena's disturbed sleep, so he was willing to do the best for her regardless of the consequences she subjected him to.

"I know, but really, Edward? You couldn't preserve one modicum dignity, could you?" she sighed.

"Wouldn't you rather be comfortable than worried about your appearance?" Hanssen chipped in – an attempt at backing Edward up when he was the one talking sense.

"No."

"Women," Edward threw his hands up in the air in resignation that there was no way he was going to please her. "Ellie's exactly the same. Sorry," he added when he caught the look Serena was shooting him. "Come on. Into bed." She raised an eyebrow at him. "_Now_."

"Bet you're loving this," she grumbled when he took her by the arm and steered her to her bed, pulling the curtain around it. "What are you doing?!" she asked him, and Hanssen heard the panic in her voice. There was a pause. "You're joking. You've got to be-"

"I'm not," he cut her off. "Take the gown of and I'll help you put the trousers on."

"No."

"Yes."

"You do realise we've not been married for over fifteen years now? You do realise I'm entitled to my privacy?" Hanssen heard Serena demand, her tone childish and petulant.

"You do realise you'll fall over if you try to do it yourself?" he reminded her. "You do realise your body is nothing I haven't seen before?"

"Shut up," she ordered him sharply. Hanssen suddenly found he was smiling to himself at their immature and nettlesome exchange; whether good or bad, Edward got a real reaction out of her, even in the state she was in, and that could only be a good thing. "If you value that hand, I suggest you back away _slowly_." Hanssen could just picture the glare that accompanied that disembodied threat.

A couple of minutes later, Edward was pulling the curtain back and Serena was in bed. It astounded Hanssen that Edward had forced her to do what Michael had been trying to get her to do – lie in bed and rest.

He watched intrigued as Serena's body relaxed under her ex-husband's touch. How ironic, that the person who could calm down Serena Campbell, relax her with only his voice and a light touch, was the one man who seemed to irritate her more than anything else on the planet. She fell asleep surprisingly quickly. She must have been exhausted.

Edward stood up and approached Hanssen. "You should grab a few hours yourself," he advised. "You seem to be dealing with what happened better than Serena is."

Hanssen said nothing for a moment, considering what Edward had said. It wasn't true. Serena was right. He was dancing around it to the point of avoiding sleep. He was doing exactly the same as she was, only he was keeping it quiet and hiding it well. When he was vulnerable, he imploded. Serena seemed to explode.

"How did you manage that?" Hanssen asked, steering the conversation away from his own coping mechanisms. "You should have seen the fuss she caused earlier, and now you've got her sleeping."

"After twenty-odd years knowing her, I've learnt how to make her sleep," he explained. "You stroke her hair. It calms her down," he revealed the secret sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck. Hanssen found it odd that such a simple yet personal gesture could make her drift off to sleep. She was a very strange person, but for him to say so would sound ridiculous; he was not unaware of how he often came across to the world.

"You should sit in on board meetings," Hanssen joked. "She might actually give some leeway with you there."

Edward laughed. "I'd be more likely to make matters worse. The only reason she's giving in is that she's too tired to fight me, and she knows I can see right through her." He added, "I'm meant to be asleep for my shift later so I'd better get home and try and get another few hours." Edward walked back briefly to Serena and kissed her head lightly; it was a flash of the remaining care he held that reminded Hanssen of both his own humanity and Serena's. Of how fragile the human race really was. "See you later, Mr. Hanssen," he smiled as he walked away.

Hanssen remembered what Jac had said, and saw she had a fair and logical point – a dream couldn't hurt him. He would wake up and still be here on Keller. It didn't dispel the fear but it made the relaxation of his tired muscles and the closing of his heavy eyes easier to achieve.

* * *

**Hope this is OK!  
Please feel free to drop me a review and tell me your thoughts!  
Sarah x**


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